After the one-season demise of Caprica, Syfy quickly greenlit the pilot of a new Battlestar Galactica spin-off prequel. Subtitled Blood & Chrome, the series was to focus on the first Cylon war, with a special focus on the formative war years of Bill Adama. The project had mostly disappeared, with rumors that it was being converted to a web series, until an impressive-looking teaser trailer started making the rounds on the internet after WonderCon. (NBC Universal has since pulled the video from YouTube.) The video resembled the trailer for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, right down to to the use of Trent Reznor’s version of “Immigrant Song,” and featured all of the robo-hunting spaceship-exploding action that the cerebral Caprica notably lacked.

Alas, a rep for Syfy tells EW that the trailer was not officially sanctioned. And in a statement from Syfy President of Original Content Mark Stern, the network indicates that even though the pilot movie will air on the network “at a future date,” the plan is still to go web-based: “Though the vision for Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome has evolved over the course of the past year, our enthusiasm for this ambitious project has not waned. We are actively pursuing it as was originally intended: a groundbreaking digital series that will launch to audiences beyond the scope of a television screen.”

Although it’s unfair to be skeptical about anything this early in the process, it’s hard to imagine a web series reaching the operatic heights of the lauded BSG reboot. Which means this is bad news for anyone hoping for an extensive return trip to the universe of BSG, and good news for everyone who thinks prequels are fundamentally a bad idea.